Saturday, October 30, 2010

Best Of Opposing Poses

One character's pose is dominant. The other characters' poses react to it.The characters' poses create interesting negative spaces between them.

One Character Opposed to a GroupMargaret is dominant character. Other kids are together a separate element. Within that element, Tommy has dominant pose with strongest line of action-directed at Margaret.BACKGROUNDS FRAME THE POSESEven the backgrounds and their negative shapes can frame the actions of the characters.Every element in a good picture is balanced against the main action and pose.Action and reactionbetween characters is very important and appealing to look at.FITTING ALL PICTURE ELEMENTS IN BALANCE AGAINST EACH OTHERhttp://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2008/08/kurtzman-and-composition.html

16 comments:

This and Eisenberg post are why I keep coming to this site. Nice stuff, and really helps this CG artist understand good art!

You may be right that this era will be remembered as the Age of Ugly. Does anyone have a theory as to why ugly animation art is so popular? Could it partly be the audience likes it because they feel they can "do better " ?

To get back to your ol'man for a second. You're a lucky man to have him JK, and he's blessed in so many ways to have a son like you. Top of the line. Raising the bar. Maybe Eisner or Wally Wood, or maybe Hogarth would dig as deep as you, but this stuff is priceless. Opposing Poses? Here's a great one from Segar. http://www.alligatorboogaloo.com/mengshui_art/segar1.gif

Absolutely. Composition is very important and really makes a huge difference. I'd even say that many "less than professional" drawings are forgiven if, at least, the composition is working. If the poses of the characters and/or objects play off each other well (as you've demonstrated in this blog post) and if the action reads 100% clear, it's working.

I was definitely thinking about all of this and more while I was creating my comic. John, it would be great if you somehow got a hold of a copy and gave it a once-over just to see how well I did. There are a few samples on my blog right now, if you're interested. It will be on sale pretty soon though.

I like to think I did pretty well. Of course, the only one who's complimented me on that so far has been my mother. Her first reaction on seeing some of the panels was "WOW! That reads." It would be great to hear other opinions in order to see the bigger picture (no pun intended).

I recently rented all three Popeye DVD sets from my local library. Totally awesome. Has anyone else watched these? If so, what's your thoughts? I think we should see more Popeye in our day to day lives. Artists our there, lets see some Popeye.